


Don't Look Back

by thekindmagic



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 18:10:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8855746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekindmagic/pseuds/thekindmagic
Summary: Ignis suspects there's more to escorting Noctis out of the city than King Regis told them.





	

Driving away from Insomnia, Prompto had been unusually quiet. He’d looked back until the city disappeared into the distance, and taken a picture of the skyline before the last towers sank out of sight.

“Homesick already?” Gladio had teased.

Nobody had pointed out that Gladio had been glancing upward every few minutes since they passed through the gates, looking for the shimmer of a magical ceiling which was no longer there.

Noctis had stared blankly out at the landscape, flexing and rubbing his hands like they pained him. It was his first time outside the crystal’s reach in years.

As the hours wore on, the three of them had settled: Noctis falling asleep, and Gladio and Prompto falling into an argument over the lyrics of some song or another.

Things aren’t so easy for Ignis.

Feeling exposed outside the wall is manageable, it’s what all the collective years of combat training in this car are for.

What’s less manageable is the irrational certainty that the road in front of them only goes one way.

Ignis tightens his hands on the steering wheel, remembering again the look on King Regis’s face as he’d sent them off. The others had gone without a second glance, but Ignis had turned back at the last moment, suddenly the frightened child he’d never had the chance to be. The king hadn’t reassured him with a smile, only met his eyes and nodded.

 _Go on_.

So Ignis had.

He hadn’t looked up as he drove through the city, listening to the chatter of people on sidewalks and feeling a dark, inverted déjà vu clutching at his chest: _this will never be again_. He hadn’t met the eyes of the guards at the gates, holding his breath as he produced his authorization papers and hoping his hands didn't shake too noticeably. He hadn’t looked back when Prompto took that picture, when the other three had turned around in their seats to watch their city vanish over the horizon.

He looks back now.

Noctis is fast asleep, framed perfectly in the rearview mirror. His face both does and doesn’t look like his father’s.

Ignis is torn between wanting to honor his royal vows and make for Altissia as quickly as possible, and wanting to turn off on some unknown road and keep driving forever while Noctis sleeps peacefully in the backseat.

Either way, he’d feel like a traitor.

Either way, there’s no going home.

Ignis takes a deep breath and looks back at the road.

Forward, then, and the rest as it comes.


End file.
